The Bush regime has helped out Obiang in numerous ways (here’s Condi Rice with him in April 2006), and Obiang repaid the favors, at one time stashing some of his loot at Riggs National Bank in D.C., a former institution formerly owned by Bush family crony Joe Allbritton with a taste given to Dubya’s uncle Jonathan Bush.

The dangling thread that just this year [2004] doomed Allbritton’s control of the bank was its link to Teodoro Obiang, dictator of Equatorial Guinea. He stashed millions of no-questions-asked dollars he got from — who else — U.S. oil companies in good ol’ Joe Allbritton’s friendly downtown D.C. bank, according to Senate investigators and others. When that was publicized in Senate hearings, thanks in large part to [Michigan senator Carl] Levin, the fabric of those expensive suits and ties inhabiting snooty Riggs Bank crumbled to dust.

As for Equatorial Guinea, well, people there are tortured by “stinging ants,” according to our own State Department. Let’s put that in context by quoting the entire sentence from the U.S. government’s 1998 report: “Police reportedly urinated on prisoners, kicked them in the ribs, sliced their ears with knives, and smeared oil over their naked bodies in order to attract stinging ants.”

The document continues, “According to credible reports, this torture was approved at the highest levels of the [Equatorial Guinea] Government and was directed by the chief of presidential security, Armengol Ondo Nguema, who is also President Obiang’s brother. Ondo Nguema allegedly taunted prisoners by describing the suffering that they were about to endure.”